Christer Berggren on freedom, reinvention, community and why real security must come from within.
For most of our lives, we are taught to answer one question before almost any other: What do you do? Our work becomes our introduction, our social position and, sometimes, our entire identity. But what if we have been asking the wrong question? What if where we live — and how that place makes us feel — matters more than the title printed on a business card?
I am Swedish, but today I live in Bulgaria. I came here believing that I had retired after decades of work in events, concerts, festivals and complex productions. Instead, people discovered what I had done and what I knew. One conversation led to another, the phone started ringing, and soon I was working again — but in a different culture and from a different position in life.
The surprising part is that I feel more at home in Bulgaria than I did in Sweden.
When perfection stops living
I still try to understand exactly why. The simplest explanation is that Bulgaria feels alive to me. Sweden is organised, developed and often close to perfect. Its public spaces can be beautifully planned, with parks and squares designed by skilled architects. The drawings show people everywhere, yet when you visit some of those places, the people are missing.
In Bulgaria, the parks are full. Families gather, older men play chess and people occupy the public space. Things do not always work smoothly. From the outside, it can look chaotic. But I understand chaos; events, festivals and productions are controlled forms of it, where the plan must constantly meet reality.
Bulgaria sometimes feels as though I have travelled 30 years back from “perfect Sweden”. At the same time, my experience can make me feel 30 years ahead. I move backwards and forwards in time: surrounded by something familiar from the past, while carrying knowledge of systems and developments that have not fully arrived here yet. That tension creates energy. Things can still evolve.
When everything is perfect, it can also become lifeless. When something is unfinished, there is room to participate.
The four-square-metre lesson
My relationship with place did not begin in Bulgaria. I have always chosen a different road. I started playing drums at six and continued until I was around 35, including years as a professional rock-and-roll drummer. Later, my work took me into tour buses, hotels, concerts, festivals and events. Movement was normal long before anyone used the expression “digital nomad”.
In 2013, I made a more radical change and moved aboard a sailboat. I lived there for six years. It was a childhood dream, but it also came during a dark period. I had experienced depression, undergone heart surgery and been told that doctors had found dark spots on my lungs. I was not in a good place psychologically or physically.
The boat gave me only around four square metres of usable floor area. There was no room for unnecessary possessions, so minimalism was not a fashionable philosophy; it was reality. Everything had to justify the space it occupied.
Living that way changed my understanding of security. We normally attach security to walls, possessions, employment contracts and familiar surroundings. On the boat, I discovered that none of those things could create lasting stability. Security had to exist inside me. If it did, I could carry it anywhere. If it did not, no apartment, salary or title could manufacture it for me.
The Instagram myth of nomadic freedom
The popular image of location-independent work is often a laptop on a beach, a coffee beside a swimming pool or a person taking a Pilates class at ten in the morning. It looks like an endless holiday. The reality is different.
Digital nomads are not on vacation. Most are searching for the next client, contract or opportunity. To live this way, you often need to be more than mobile: you need to be entrepreneurial. That can mean thinking about work every hour of the day. Some people eventually return home because they bought a social-media dream without understanding the business reality beneath it.
Freedom therefore requires boundaries. While living on the boat, I created rules for myself. I could decide not to open the computer before nine. I could check email only once a day and refuse to answer immediately. Technology allows us to work from almost anywhere, but without discipline it also follows us everywhere. The goal is not permanent availability. The goal is control over when, where and why we connect.
I wish I had understood this lifestyle earlier. I encourage my children to travel, experience other cultures and discover how different environments affect them. You do not choose the country where you are born, and it may not ultimately be the place where you belong. Leaving does not mean rejecting your origins. Sometimes distance helps you understand them more clearly.
Becoming a person again
Something important happens when people meet outside their home countries. At home, we often introduce ourselves through status: CEO, specialist, manager, consultant. Abroad, those labels become less important. We connect because we have all left something familiar and are trying to understand something new.
But those relationships are not necessarily built around hierarchy. You may discover much later that the ordinary person beside you has led a major company, built a successful business or achieved something extraordinary. In a new place, they have permission to be nobody. That can be enormously liberating.
I feel the same. I know that I am somebody, but I no longer need to prove it every time I enter a room.
This is one reason Bansko has become so meaningful to me. The mountain town has developed into an international hub for location-independent workers. Bansko Nomad Fest brings together around a thousand people, who meet there and later spread out across the world. They reconnect in places such as Bali, Vietnam and Albania, creating a community that is digital but still deeply human.
The first generation of digital nomads is also growing older. People meet partners, have children and ask which of the places they visited could become home. In Bansko, some are buying property while remaining part of the coworking community. The movement is not disappearing; it is maturing.
This is a community by choice. A workplace community shares an employer. A nomadic community forms around shared values, curiosity and a desired way of living. You choose it, creating a different kind of commitment.
Success on your own terms
My idea of success has changed. I no longer care much about success as other people define it. A title can look impressive without making a person happy. A stable job can disappear. An organisation cannot guarantee security forever. External approval is temporary and often conditional.
The better question is: Am I successful in my own eyes?
For me, the answer is yes. Friends in Sweden may think I am crazy. People sometimes suggest that someone my age should stop, settle down or accept narrower limits. But I was not ready to stop living. I am turning 65, and I wake up excited. My partner asks why I wake with a smile and why I am so happy. The answer is that I feel more alive now than when I had an apartment in Sweden and a conventional job waiting every morning.
I have also become more careful about saying yes. Praise once pulled me into the wrong assignments. But being told who you are is not the same as knowing who you are. Today, I think first and ask whether the task truly fits me. The only person who knows what is typical of you is you.
Leap, fail and stand up again
So what would I tell someone considering a move abroad or a more independent life?
Leap. Jump. If you succeed, you succeed. If you fail, stand up and jump again.
This is not a promise that everything will be easy. Failure hurts. But you cannot fully learn failure from a book or understand it by watching a film. You have to live through it. Then you discover that falling is not the end of your identity. You can get up, use what you learned and try again.
There is no absolute security in commuting to the same office every day. There is only familiarity, and familiarity is not the same thing as safety. Real security comes from trusting that you can respond when circumstances change.
Be cautious, but do not let fear make every decision. Build your life on your own terms. Find places that make you feel awake. Choose communities that recognise you as a person rather than a title. Work hard, establish boundaries and understand that freedom carries responsibility.
The right environment does not solve every problem, but it can give us the courage, relationships and perspective needed to solve them ourselves again.
Most importantly, do not wait for someone else to define success for you. Where you live influences how you think, whom you meet, what you imagine and who you are allowed to become. Sometimes changing place is not running away from your life.
Sometimes it is how you finally step into it.
By Chris...
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